Bonjour à tous,
Christian's answer is great!
Attention: "Il a peur de souris" is not grammatically correct as "souris" is not an indirect object pronoun here. It requires the use of the definite/indefinite article as Christian explained very well.
-> a specific mouse
-> all mice
I hope this is helpful.
Bonne journée !
Salut Malvinder,
You raise an interesting point.
The noun souris is both singular and plural depending on context.
So I suspect that both peur de souris or peur des souris could be correct where the translation is mouse or mice (mouses)
Looking forward to a staff expert's comment on this point.
Bonne continuation.
Jim
Good to learn that "souris" is both singular and plural. However, with this new knowledge I cannot really find a way that "Il a peur de souris" could be correct:
- If we interpret "souris" as singular:
We would need either a definite article ("He is afraid of the mouse (the one that just showed up)") that is "Il a peur de la souris" or an indefinite article ("He is afraid of a mouse!") that is "Il a peur d'une souris!".
- If we interpret "souris" as plural:
We need a definite article when we want to express "mice" in general ("He is afraid of mice"). Therefore, "Il a peur des souris" (contraction of de+les). If we want to express "some mice", I guess "Il a peur de souris" would work grammatically but I do not see how this would ever make sense ("He is afraid of some mice.").
Malvinder,
as a supplement to Christian’s detailed answer, to understand the different uses of de/du/de la/des further, have a look at the link below to Laura Lawless site :
https://www.lawlessfrench.com/grammar/de-vs-du-de-la-des-verbs/
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